Clay Masters
Clay Masters is Iowa Public Radio’s Morning Edition host and lead political reporter. He was part of a team of member station political reporters who covered the 2016 presidential race for NPR. He also covers environmental issues.
Clay joined the Iowa Public Radio newsroom as a statehouse correspondent in 2012 and started hosting Morning Edition in 2014. Clay is an award-winning multi-media journalist whose radio stories have been heard on various NPR and American Public Media programs.
He was one of the founding reporters of Harvest Public Media, the regional journalism consortium covering agriculture and food production in the Midwest. He was based in Lincoln, Nebraska where he worked for Nebraska’s statewide public radio and television network.
He’s also an occasional music contributor to NPR’s arts desk.
Clay’s favorite NPR program is All Things Considered.
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Farmers in the Midwest say they are struggling because of President Trump's ongoing trade war, and a recent decision on renewable fuels made from corn and soybeans that benefits the oil industry.
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The Iowa State Fair is a staple of presidential campaigns. It's often a spectacle, and that's been magnified with so many Democrats running in the 2020 campaign.
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Democrats running for president in Iowa have been spending time with a failed congressional candidate from their party who almost beat a Republican congressman well-known for making racist remarks.
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President Trump promised Midwestern corn farmers that he would lift some restrictions on blending corn-derived ethanol into gasoline. Iowa farmers say the policies are undermining them in other ways.
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With Iowa caucuses still nine months away, candidates in the huge field of Democrats are looking to stand out. One way: show up in voters' homes. -
A least four of the major Democratic candidates will gather for an event billed as a way for the party to reconnect with rural voters. "If you ain't there, you're square," editor Art Cullen says. -
Democratic presidential contenders will visit a small Iowa town this weekend. They're there in part because of the town's newspaper editor, who's drawn attention to rural issues with his editorials.
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Many Democrats with presidential ambitions in 2020 are already making trips to Iowa. And some of them are trying hard to win over rural supporters the party lost in 2016.
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GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa was removed from two House panels as a punishment for his recent comments in a New York Times interview where he questioned whether "white supremacy" was an offensive term.
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The tight governor races in Kansas and Georgia, where the Republican candidate is also overseeing the election, have motivated Democrats to elect secretaries of states in other places.
